Zoo 2
by Scarlett Crimson Red
Summary: This is my sequel to my first story Zoo. I DO NOT OWN ANYTHING!
1. I Will Always Find You

The leopard growled from within the crate that it was being held in as we waited for Mitch and the others to come get me and Jamie. I laid beside the crate next to the roaring fire as my daughter nuzzled up close to me and latched onto a tit and began to drink.

"Have you thought of a name for her yet?" Jamie asked me. I looked around the room and my eyes laid onto a book. I barked at it and Jamie got up and grabbed it. She laid it in front of me and opened it up to a random page. I scanned the page and pointed my nail to a letter barking when I needed her to turn the page. "M—I—C—H—E—L—L—E—L—U—N—A. Michelle Luna. That's beautiful, Callana." The old man came back into the room and sat down on the couch and looked into the crate and Jamie turned her attention back to the leopard. "My friends are coming to get us. You have a very important job to do." The man spoke Inuttitut in joy. "You know, they are going to write books about you, the man who saved the leopard who saved the world. I'm going to make sure that they're translated."

"Nawok." The man laughed, getting up from the couch.

"Nawok? That's. . . uh, rope?" The man walked out the front door and closed it behind him. The leopard began to growl even more now. "Hey. What is it?" A bear roared as the front door busted open and the old man stumbled in and fell to the ground, bleeding out from claw marks on his torso. Jamie gasped and backed away from the body. I jumped to my paws, Michelle whining. Jamie rushed to the door and closed it before the pack of wolves outside could get in. The leopard growled from inside the crate. Jamie grabbed the rope on top of the crate and I went behind it and pushed as she pulled the crate to the basement steps. She pushed it down the steps and the crate broke open at the bottom of the steps, freeing the leopard. I picked Michelle up by the scruff and ran down the steps with Jamie behind me, making sure that she closed the basement door behind her.

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Jamie grabbed some rope that was in the basement and tied it around the leopard's neck and tied the other end to a post. Jamie walked over to me and reached out to take Michelle from me. I growled at her and bared my teeth at her while I backed up.

"Callana, she'll be safe here with the leopard." Jamie reassured me. "The others will find the leopard and they'll also find Michelle. I promise." I thought about it for second and then slowly dropped Michelle in front of Jamie's feet. She picked her up and placed her under a red crate so Michelle couldn't go anywhere. "Go ahead and lead the animals away. I'll be right behind you. Whatever you do, don't turn back." Jamie opened one of the basement windows for me and I hopped up, pulling myself through the tight space. I didn't waste any time. I took off in a run through the crowd animals that was trying to get into the house. I howled and barked at them and they started to chase me as I ran into the woods. Growling and barking sounded behind me as the pack of wolves chased me. I pushed myself to the limits, the trees a blur around me. For a second, I forgot about the wolves chasing me and focused on how good it felt to finally be running free. While I was in my own little world, I was paying attention to what was in front of me. I tripped over a root and began rolling down a hill. My side slammed into a tree and I fell into a hole. I looked through the opening and saw the pack of wolves race by me. When I was sure that they were gone, I poked my head out and looked in the direction that I came from, waiting for Jamie to appear. A few moments passed and there still was no sign of her. I climbed out of the hole and looked in the direction that would take me back to the United States. I looked over my shoulder one more time for Jamie before I started walking away.

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For more days than I could count, I walked and walked and walked and walked, never stopping. Only sleeping when I passed out and only eating and drinking when I came across something. My paws kept me propelling forward as they had a mind of own. They were pulling me in a direction only my heart and instincts knew. My only thought of the past was that I hoped the others got the leopard and Michelle and my only thought of the future was a future with Mitch and Michelle. And Jamie. . . I hope she made it out okay. I crossed the border a couple nights ago. The wind blew at my face and I raised my nose into the air and inhaled a sweet, intoxicating scent. A scent that I would never forget. Mitch. My legs shook with lack of energy as I pushed them through the remaining trees of the woods and into an open field. In the middle of the field was a small airport with a large plane on the platform with the back door opened. I ran to the opening and peered up into it. Before I could get a good visual, a gun cocked to my left and I turned to see a Hispanic woman with black hair aiming a gun at me. I crouched low to the ground in fear and she stared at me in shock. Maybe I was wrong. Maybe my nose was playing tricks on me.

"Dariela?" A man's voice came from the other side of the plane. A couple seconds later, Jackson appeared. I raised my head slightly in joy but quickly lowered it when I remembered the woman with the gun. "Dariela, what are you doing?"

"It's a wolf. Probably strayed off from a nearby pack. We need to get moving before the rest of its pack gets here." Jackson turned and gazed at me before his eyes got wide with realization.

"Dariela, put your gun down. She won't do you any harm."

"And how do you know that?" Jackson crouched down in front of me and slowly extended his hand to me and scratched the side of my face.

"She's a friend and Mitch will need to see her as soon as possible. Stay right here, Callana." Jackson got up and walked up the ramp to the vehicle bay and grabbed a blanket from a cabinet and walked back down to me. He held the blanket up like a curtain and I sat up. I closed my eyes and searched deeper than what I did before for my human side. Once I found it, I grabbed onto it and began to phase back into my human form. Once I was fully shifted, Jackson wrapped the blanket around to cover myself.

"Jackson, what the hell is going on?"

"I'll explain everything soon." My legs shook as Jackson took my hand and helped me up the ramp of the plane. I needed Jackson's help because my legs were weak not only for not being able to eat anything for several days but also because I haven't walked on these legs for several months. He guided me through a door and down a small hallway that opened up to a very large laboratory. There were two medical tables in the center with one of them occupied. What looked to be a man had a disformed face and lacerations all over his body with half of his left arm missing and the bone sticking out. I pulled my eyes away from it and found his back to us, staring at a computer screen. "Hey, Mitch, you want to see what I found? Or rather what Dariela found."

"Not really." Mitch sighed.

"Oh, I'm pretty sure that you're gonna wanna see this one." Mitch's shoulders sagged as he sighed and turned around in his seat. Seeing his face broke my heart. His brown eyes were so hard and dead and he had bags under his eyes. As soon as his eyes laid on me, I could see him stop breathing.

"Callana?" Tears burned my eyes as I nodded and he got up from his seat and rushed over to me. He picked me up in his arms and I was glad he did. My legs were about to give out on me. I gripped onto him and buried my nose into his shirt, inhaling his scent and feeling the warmth of him. "How did you get here?" I pulled away from him and swallowed my sob.

"It's been a long journey." I rasped, my throat dry and scratchy was the lack of liquids my body had. He pulled me into his embrace again.

"I thought I lost you." I closed my eyes and supported myself against him.

"I will always find my way back to you, Mitchell."

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I sat on the edge of the other medical table listening to the raspy panting of the creature next to me. I felt a lot better after getting hellos and hugs from everybody on the team and welcoming me back.

"His arm looks like it was bitten off." Jackson said. Mitch came over to me and handed me a mug of hot chocolate.

"Drink." Mitch ordered as he took my blood pressure. "More like it was gnawed. Whatever happened, it wasn't fast. It was clean. It probably hurt like hell."

"Is anyone going to tell me what's going on?" I asked, my voice sounding clearer.

"Well, probably because we don't know what's going on ourselves. All we know is that this guy has what they call a phase two mutation and we're studying him."

"Okay, and who's this Dariela chick?"

"She's a ranger."

"And Michelle?" Mitch looked up from his work at me at the mention of his daughter's name.

"She's fine. She's perfectly healthy." I sighed in relief.

"Can I see her?"

"She's not here. She's with Clementine at a safe zone in Maine."

"But is she still—"

"A wolf? No, she phased about a day after we got her and the leopard."

"Will she ever—"

"Turn back into a wolf like you? I don't know, Calla. All that matters is that she's safe."

"I'm sorry I didn't tell you. I didn't know I was pregnant."

"You're fine, Calla."

"Son of a bitch." Dariela snapped as she walked into the lab with Abraham behind her. "Why is this thing still alive?"

"Okay, so I got a hit on his fingerprints." Chloe said walking in. "He's a doctor from Hungary working with the Red Cross. Janos Kovacs."

"Kovacs?"

"Do you know him?" Abraham inquired.

"Yeah. I—I mean, not well, but we worked the same refugee camp in Egypt a few years back."

"According to his visa, he arrived five weeks ago." Chloe informed us Was headed for a village in Argentina called Ydermo."

"Well, then that's where we start." Jackson said.

"Don't bother." Dariela said. "My team was there two days ago. Everybody's dead. Massacred by this things Kovacs turned into."

"Well, it's our only lead."

"You all are insane. What if there are more like him out there?"

"She has a point." Abraham agreed. "We don't know what we're walking into. We should wait until Mitch has finished his tests, so we know more about this new mutation."

"Why am I not surprised you want to stay on the plane?" Mitch snapped at Abraham and I flinched at the waves of hostility rolling off of Mitch.

"Excuse me?"

"You heard me. You know, sometimes what's out there is worth the risk. But if you want to hang back, take a bubble bath, that's cool with me. Just stay out of my way, okay?"

"Bubble bath?"

"Yes."

"This is how, out of anger, you'd characterize me—as a man that has been taking bubble baths since we've begun this?"

"Metaphorically—speaking, yeah, I'm comfortable with that characterization." I held up a hand to silence both of them.

"Okay, I don't know what's going on with you two," I spoke and then turned to glare at Mitch. "I'll find out later," I looked back at Abraham. "But you two need to put it aside for right now and hash it out later."

"We need to find the animal responsible for transferring the mutation." Chloe said. "Lieutenant Marzan, you'll take Jackson and Abe to Ydermo."

"Is that an order?" Dariela barked at her. "Cause I don't see stripes on your sleeve." I buried my head in my hands.

"Oh, my God, too much hostility." I muttered, shaking my head.

"I don't need stripes." Chloe said. "I have a plane. The quicker we get what we need, the quicker you get back to Sao Paulo." Dariela didn't argue with that.

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"So you don't know where Jamie is?" Mitch asked me as he inserted an IV in me to help liquids get into my system faster. I shook my head.

"She said that she would be right behind me but she wasn't." I said. Mitch ran his hands down my side and stopping where my rib cage protruded my body. He lifted up my shirt where you could clearly see each one of my ribs.

"You must have lost like thirty pounds." I looked him directly in the eye.

"You don't know what I've been through to get back to you." He was quiet for a moment before he moved down to my legs and began to move them back and forth, stretching the muscles.

"You're right, I don't."

"So, what's going on between you and Abe?" Mitch sighed before he placed a clip on my finger to take my heart rate.

"He forced me to leave you and Jamie behind in New Brunswick."

"Mitch, that place was overrun by animals. Abraham was right to put you on the helicopter."

"I could have found both of you and then you wouldn't have gone through what you did."

"And you have been killed in the process."

"It would have been worth it."

"Not for me it wouldn't be. I'd rather die than for you to die.

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"So the plan is to stimulate the neocortex." Mitch explained to Chloe and me. "That's the most evolved part of the brain."

"That's the part of the brain responsible for speech?" Chloe asked.

"More precisely, the part that makes us human. Language, social structure, self-control, empathy. Putting the toilet seat down. All the things we know we should do to be productive members of society. All thanks to the neocortex."

"Will it hurt him?"

"No, he'll be fine. Just a small electronic pulse, kind of like a static shock." Mitch stared hard at Chloe for a moment while she stared intently at Kovacs. She looked up at him.

"What?"

"Is there something you're not telling me?" She hesitated before she answered.

"Kovacs proves that the mutation has spread to humans. Finding a new cure is more important than ever." Kovacs began groaning.

"Isabel. . . bella." Kovacs groaned as black substances started coming out of his eyes.

"What is that?"

"I think he's. . . crying." Mitch said. Kovacs started to choke as the same black stuff spewed from his mouth and the monitor beeped and Kovacs began to convulse. "He's crashing."

"What did you do?"

"I didn't even start the test yet."

"What's happening?"

"We've got to cut him loose." I hopped off my medical table and ran to Mitch's side to help him.

"We can't lose him."

"Turn him over his side. He's going to choke." I grunted as I rolled him over towards Mitch as Kovacs gasped. His fist shot out catching Mitch in the shoulder and knocking him over. I was on the other side of the table in a heartbeat, placing myself between Kovacs and Mitch while Chloe pulled out her gun and shot at Kovacs scaring him off to somewhere else on the plane.

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"Trotter?" Chloe called to the pilot through the com. "Trotter, if you can hear me, stay in the cockpit. Lock the door."

"Screw this." Mitch said. "I think we should go check the bar."

"Why?"

"Well, I don't know, wasn't alcohol invented for times like this?"

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I slowly crept along the dark, keeping low to the ground, my eyes shifting from left to right for any signs of Kovacs. Something jumped down behind me and I took off in a run. I ran around the spiral staircase, my paws slipping out from underneath me as I tried to take the corner to the lab. My nails clicked and slid against the tile as I got my hind legs back underneath me and pushed myself forward. Kovacs growled behind me as I raced through the lab and towards a metal cage on the other side of it. I threw my hind legs underneath me more to help me make the turn and as Kovacs passed in front of the cage, Mitch came out of hiding and threw his body into Kovacs' side to knock him into the cage.

"Get out!" Chloe yelled at Mitch as he scrambled out of the cage before Kovacs get him. As soon as Mitch was out, Chloe slammed the cage door shut and Mitch locked it. I shifted and pulled a blanket around me.

"Next time you're the bait." I said, playfully shoving Mitch as he panted for breath.

"You're welcome." He said as Kovacs growled from within the cage.

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"There were bodies everywhere." Abraham informed us once they got back onto the plane and Trotter took off. "Stacked like firewood. Never before have I seen a wake this large descend from above the clouds." I rubbed my right shoulder and wincing at the soreness.

"What were they doing up there?" Jackson asked.

"I think they were responsible for the blood rain that drove the villagers away."

"How is that possible?" Chloe inquired.

"Mitch, can you look at my shoulder please?" I asked and he immediately dropped what he was doing and walked over to me. He took my right arm gingerly in his hands. He had one hand on top of my shoulder and the other rotating my arm around.

"As much as I hate to admit it. . . he's right." Mitch said, crossing my arm across my chest and I cried out in pain as a heat pain flashed against my arm. I clenched my teeth and growled at him. "Sorry, Calla. You just have a separated shoulder." Mitch walked over to the medicine cabinet and scrambled through it. "Ran some tests on the rain while I was waiting for the results on that, uh, elephant blood you brought back." Mitch came back with an arm sling.

"You expect me to wear that?"

"You expect it to get better by not wearing this?" I growled and held out my arm to him as he slipped it into the sling. "God, you're so stubborn." I glared at him.

"Coming from the King of all Stubbornness."

"So the vultures are responsible for the rain?" Chloe asked, interrupting our spat.

"This blood rain is highly acidic, and the protein structure matches the corrosive bile that vultures have in their digestive tract." Mitch explained.

"How did the bile get into the rain?" Jackson inquired.

"The frozen feather." Abraham said. "It's cold at forty thousand feet."

"The vultures feed, they fly above the cloud cover." Mitch said. "And that high up, they can seed the clouds with acidic bile."

"But they were stockpiling human bodies." Chloe reminded him. "So you're saying that—"

"The red color? It's blood. Human blood."

"So not only did they feed on the villagers, but they poisoned their water supply, destroyed their crops." Jackson said. "This is a whole new level of aberrant and aggressive behavior. Well, how about the elephant blood that I brought back in?"

"Unremarkable. We've seen plenty of animals with the same mutation, right? If there was something special about the elephant, I could attribute that mutation transfer to that, but it's—"

"But it isn't about the elephant." Abraham said.

"It's about the man."

"So, you're saying that there's something specific about Kovacs' genetic makeup that made it possible for the mutation to occur in him." Jackson said.

"Yeah, that's what it looks like. Now, I think it's gonna have a little time to figure out what that is exactly."

"Fine." Chloe snapped. "Then you run more tests. We have him, we have a chance. We can study him and maybe learn how to reverse it." The door to the lab opened and Dariela stormed in.

"You let that thing loose again?" Dariela snapped.

"Dariela, now is not the time." Abraham said but Dariela ignored him and stormed over to Chloe.

"Instead of putting it down, you let it loose again—"

"I'm sorry about your friends, but they died in the line of duty." Chloe said. "And right now, there's only one person that matters. Janos Kovacs."

"Stop saying that. That's not him."

"Yes, it is. He's still in there!" Dariela walked over to the cage where Janos was and pulled out her gun and pointed it at his head.

"No, he's not." She pulled the trigger and the shot rang throughout the lab and Janos dropped to the ground.


	2. Bubble Bath

I jumped off the medical table and positioned myself in front of Mitch, keeping my left hand on his chest to keep him back and away from Dariela. I locked eyes on her, watching her every movement as a growl rose up in my chest. Mitch gingerly took my hand off him and moved around me to the cage and opened it. I followed him, keeping myself between him and Dariela.

"You got something you want to say?" Dariela questioned me. "I will put you down like a dog."

"I'll have your throat in my mouth before your finger even touches the trigger." I growled.

"You sure about that?" Mitch placed a hand on my shoulder and glared at Dariela.

"She won't do anything unless you do something first." Mitch said to Dariela before walking into the cage and kneeling down beside Janos. "He's dead." Chloe rounded on Dariela.

"Do you have any idea what you've done?" Chloe asked.

"What were you thinking, huh? Who are you anyway?"

"You never should've brought that monster on this plane." Dariela said.

"Huh, who is she?"

"That monster was our only chance at understanding the new mutation!" Jackson shouted at Dariela.

"He already killed six of my guys, you wanted to wait until he killed somebody else?" Dariela inquired.

"Everybody should just calm down." Abraham suggested.

"Calm down?" Mitch questioned him. "Yeah, great idea, Abe. I can namaste with the best of them, but you know what? This chick just ruined our best shot at saving the world." I gently pushed Mitch back and snapped my fingers at him. I was getting overwhelmed and tired of him being so hostile towards Abraham.

"That is enough, Mitchell." I snapped at him. "Abraham isn't the one who screwed up here, it was Dariela. So do not take all your anger and frustration out on Abe. Do you understand?"

"Yes, Calla. But-" I snapped my fingers at him again to shut him up.

"Not another word, Mitch."

"You're going to save the world?" Dariela asked and I turned towards her.

"Yeah, that's the idea."

"Oh, well that's just great, that just really inspires confidence."

"OK, enough now!" Chloe yelled. "Mitch, run every test you can on the body."

"Well, that's going to require a whole lot of complex DNA work, and I'm not going to be able to do that unless we bring DC in on it." Mitch explained.

"We'll figure out a way. . ."

"Hold on, you haven't told Washington?" Dariela inquired.

"No, I haven't told Washington."

"My team died for that festering freak and you bastards are off book?"

"This operation is strictly need-to-know."

"I don't give a steaming crap about your spy secrets, lady. I want my ops center on the radio now."

"I don't care what you want. This plane is under my command. And so are you."

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"I did not miss that." I muttered as Mitch pulled the needle from my arm and took the vile of blood over to his work station.

"I just want to see if anything has changed in your bloodwork." Mitch explained. "You were out there for a long time, Calla. It's possible you were exposed to this phase two mutation." Mitch walked to the other side of the lab and I sat there in silence before I spoke again.

"My answer hasn't changed."

"Excuse me?" Mitch came back in my line of sight.

"Of marrying you. My answer hasn't changed. It's still yes." The more he looked at me, the more his eyes got more life back into them and with what I just said, his eyes lit up with life, with an eternal light that never seemed to fade.

"I would hope not." He leaned down to kiss me but before our lips could touch, Chloe walked into the lab.

"Sorry to interrupt, but Eleanor wants to meet with us." She said and walked back out. I looked at Mitch for an explanation.

"Eleanor is the one running our mission. You feel up to going to meet her?"

"Always." I answered.

"I don't want you to push yourself, Calla."

"I'm not, Mitch. I feel fine."

"Okay."

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Chloe, Jackson, Mitch and I ascended the stairs to a headquarters in Switzerland. There were armed guards everywhere and businessmen running back and forth in front of us.

"Just follow my lead." Chloe said.

"I'm assuming Eleanor didn't want us come here for a reason." Jackson said as we looked around the room for Eleanor.

"Well, she never showed up at the plane, so we don't have a whole lot of options." Mitch informed him.

"That's Lieutenant Reed." Chloe said, looking across the room. "Eleanor's adjutant." Chloe took the lead and headed over to him with the rest of us behind her.

"Agent Tousignant, what are you doing here?" Reed asked her.

"Looking for Eleanor."

"I assumed she was still with you."

"She never arrived."

"I'll ask around. Maybe someone else has seen her."

"Thank you."

"I'll check the other meeting." Lieutenant Reed pushed past us and left us to our own thoughts on where Eleanor might be.

"Well, that's not good." Jackson said and Chloe sighed.

"It's about to get worse." Chloe muttered as she stared at another man in a military uniform walking towards us. "That's General Davies, the man Eleanor warned us about."

"Agent Tousignant." Davies called to her as he approached us.

"General Davies, pleasure to meet you."

"I hope you're not here to offer us another ridiculous idea for a cure."

"No, we just had some loose ends to tie up with Eleanor."

"Ah, yes, our patron saint of lost causes." A growl rumbled low in my chest as my wolf was getting irritated at his attitude. Mitch quickly wrapped his arm around me and pulled me behind his back, shutting me up before Davies could notice anything. "I'm afraid she's yet to grace us with her presence today. Agent Tousignant, I'm gonna be straight with you—you're a talented analyst. Too talented to be wasting your time with Frodo and Sam here." I rocked onto my tiptoes to look over Mitch's shoulder but he quickly pushed me back down. "We can use your skills here with the Noah Objective."

"You cannot exterminate every animal on the planet and then repopulate it." Jackson snapped at him. "The entire ecosystem will crash. You understand that right?"

"The Noah Objective is the most scientifically sound option we have."

"It's madness."

"Extreme? Yes. Unquestionably, but so are the circumstances."

"Damn it, I knew it!" Mitch exclaimed and we looked at him questionably. "I knew I recognized you. Chloe, Jackson, Calla, this is Dr. . . . Andrew Davies. He's got a PhD from Cambridge. I read your graduate thesis."

"I'm familiar with your work as well, Dr. Morgan. The study you published about mast cell tumors. The one that was ultimately. . . discredited." Mitch held his arm out to stop me from moving around him and Davies returned his attention to Chloe. "You had your chance to find a cure. You failed. Every day spent discussing how to save the animals means thousands of human lives will be lost. So as much as I'd like to stand here debating ethics with you all day, I have a war to win." Davies pivoted on his heel and returned to his group.

"That's the guy running the Noah Objective?" Jackson inquired.

"And now we're smack-dab in the middle of his crosshairs." Mitch said.

"We need to find Eleanor now." Chloe said.

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"I'll say one thing about the animal apocalypse." Mitch said as we walked into Eleanor's hotel room. "Makes it easier to bribe hotel employees."

"Eleanor?" Chloe called into the dark room. We turned on the light to see a black woman laying in the middle of the hotel room. "No!" Mitch walked over to her and turned her over onto her back and Chloe and I gasped in shock and disgust as we stared at her mauled mandible that was hanging completely over her face. "What happened to her?

"Her entire mandible is separated from her jaw. All right, we got to call the cops."

"Wait. She wanted to tell us something. Something she could say over the phone. She was concerned someone was listening to her." Chloe grabbed the remote to the TV and turned up the volume. "Maybe whoever it was killed her."

"Maybe. Maybe not. See, those are some scorch marks. Looks like something burned her from the inside out."

"Radioactive material has been used in assassinations before." Chloe informed him as she started to go through Eleanor's laptop.

"You think she was assassinated?" Jackson questioned her.

"She said it herself. That Davies would shut down anyone standing in the way of the Noah Objective."

"Yeah, but come on, that's. . . that's a little extreme, huh?"

"If I'm gonna get any answers, I'm gonna need a sample of cerebrospinal fluid." Mitch said. "Check out her nervous system for any chemicals or radiation."

"I'll take a look around the room."

"We need to find out what she was trying to tell us." Chloe said. I followed Jackson's lead and started looking around the room. A black in the corner of the room caught my attention and I cautiously walked over to it. It seemed to be moving and my wolf was on edge, ready to shift if it was something dangerous. As I looked closer, I noticed that they were ants.

"Mitch. . . check this out." I called to him. Mitch gagged as he sucked cerebrospinal fluid through a straw from Eleanor's back.

"A little busy here." He barked at me.

"Suck bodily fluids through a straw later and come look at this." Mitch stored the straw in an ice container and walked over to me.

"Scoop up some ants. Hurry before this spinal fluid goes bad."

"Well, that's a sentence that you could go your whole life and never hear." Jackson muttered as he began to scoop up some ants in another container.

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"We, um, we need to reach out to someone else in Eleanor's department." Jackson told Chloe as she watched the news about Eleanor's death on TV in the plane's lab.

"She didn't have a department." Chloe informed him. "It was only her an Amelia. With them both gone, we're working alone."

"Which means there's no search them being sent to look for Jamie." Mitch said as he began setting up the spinal fluid for examination.

"Hey, Mitch, no one's giving up on Jamie, ok?" Jackson said. "We will find a way to. . ."

"No on is gonna waste any resources looking for a redhead lost in the woods, right?" Jackson didn't say anything because he knew that Mitch was right. "Right?" Jackson kept quiet and turned back around to watch the news about other deaths like Eleanor's.

"So other people died just like Eleanor?"

"It would appear so." Chloe said.

"Well, then maybe this is bigger than General Davies."

"Or smaller?" Mitch said as he looked through the microscope.

"What's that?" Mitch pulled up the microscopic on the television screen so we could see it.

"That is Eleanor's cerebrospinal fluid."

"What are those?"

"Check this out." Mitch zoomed in on a black mass and I squinted my eyes at it as I studied it.

"There was an ant inside Eleanor's spine when she died?" I asked Mitch.

"So the ants killed her?" Jackson inquired.

"Maybe." Mitch breathed.

"But how?" Chloe questioned him.

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"Hey, I just got off the phone with Dariela." Chloe said.

"What does she want?" I growled.

"Yeah, and why do we care?" Mitch asked and I gave an agreeing smile and nodded my headed, taking a sip from my drink.

"She wants to show us something, says it's important to what we're working on." Chloe explained.

"Well, so is that creature, formerly known as Janos Kovacs, but that didn't stop her from putting a bullet in his brain."

"Another fine point." I agreed.

"I'll go with you." Jackson offered Chloe and the two of them walked off. Mitch and I turned back to the lab table. Mitch handed me a small pair of gloves and I slipped them on as he went to work on the spinal fluid and I started to run tests on the ants from Eleanor's spinal fluid. Abraham sat at the edge of the table watching us before Mitch turned to him and said something.

"Oh, I—I don't need any help." Mitch told him.

"That's strange." Abraham said, staring at the ants in the glass container from Eleanor's hotel room. I glanced past Mitch at the container and saw that all the ants were piling up in one corner. "They all seem determined to move in that one direction." Mitch picked the container up and turned it around and the ants changed directions and went back to the other corner. "And it looks like they're being drawn to something. But what?"

"I have no idea. I could ponder that for a while, but I'd rather ponder this." Mitch picked up his drink and took a sip from it.

"Mitch."

"What?"

"Callana would have wanted you to finish what we began."

"Oh. Now you're going to tell me what Callana would've wanted? Hmm? After you left her out there in the middle of nowhere?" I put down my forceps and looked over at them two.

"Probably because he is right, Mitch." I snapped at him. "I told you before, Mitch, I am grateful that Abraham got you back on that helicopter." Mitch placed both hands on the table and leaned forward onto it while looking to the right at me.

"And what about what you had to go through to get here?" I stood up from my seat and took off my gloves and walked over to him. I placed my left hand on his back and my right hand on his arm and looked up at him affectionately.

"I made it back here. Back to you. That's all that matters. I'm fine."

"You're fine? Calla, you haven't been able to sleep at all since you arrived here. And when you do, you toss and turn and have nightmares. You are not fine. And it's all because you had to go through what you did out in the wild. That wouldn't have happened if I could have looked for you and found you in New Brunswick." I was quiet for a moment.

"Please, Mitch, I am asking you, leave the past alone."

"And what about Jamie?"

"We will find her, okay?"

"But we haven't yet and that's not good enough for me." He turned his attention back to Abraham.

"Mitch." He ignored me. "Mitchell!" He continued to ignore me. "You're un-freaking-believable."

"You think I wanted to?" Abraham asked him. "I made a difficult call. To save your life."

"And I thank you for that, Abe." I said to him over Mitch's shoulder.

"I didn't need saving. She did." Mitch said, pointing to me.

"Callana and Jamie are my friends, too." Abraham reminded Mitch.

"I don't see any evidence of that."

"How dare you assume that your pain is more important than ours?! Cuts deeper than ours! The grief of losing both Callana and Jamie does not belong to you alone!" Before any more words could be said, electricity began crackling from within the ants' container. "What?" The crackling intensified.

"Guess we now know how that ants killed Eleanor." I muttered.

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"They're dead ants everywhere." Jackson said over the phone after he called us when he and Chloe examined a blown transformer with Dariela.

"They're generating electricity." Mitch explained.

"What are you talking about?"

"The ants we collected. They can generate electricity, that's how they're killing people."

"Hold on, you're saying ants are electrocuting people?" Dariela asked.

"Yup, that's what happened to Eleanor. Enough of these ants together could generate a powerful enough charge to. . ."

". . . to blow up a transformer." Chloe finished for me.

"First people, now transformers—what's next?" Dariela breathed.

"Ants move in a straight line." I said.

"What were the other explosions?" Chloe inquired.

"Power station." Mitch answered, laying a map out in front of him. "Near Parc Trembley, next one was just over the border in, um, Les. . . Pu. . . Pugens."

"Pugins." I corrected him.

"Les Pugins." Chloe corrected both of us.

"We mapped all the deaths cause by the ants, including Eleanor." Abraham said. "They all fall along the same line. W. . ." Abraham glanced over at the ants who were still crackling with electricity. "What if all the ants in Geneva were heading to the same place?"

"The Large Particle Accelerator." Mitch said. "It runs underground, it's the largest machine in the world. It collides subatomic particles. Helps us understand the laws of nature." Mitch inhaled deeply. "The incidents all seem to be heading in a straight line right for it."

"But why?" Chloe asked.

"I don't know."

"Certain kinds of ants are drawn to electrical systems." I informed her.

"And these ants have the phase two mutation."

"If you think they're gonna attack the accelerator, we should evacuate people." Dariela said.

"It won't help. If all these ants make it to the accelerator and generate a strong enough charge, they could create a runaway fusion reaction. Which would kill every living thing within a thousand-mile radius."

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"Do you realize how crazy this sounds?" A French operative at the LPA asked Jackson as Abraham, Mitch and I walked through the double doors to them.

"Yes, I do." Jackson said. "We hear this all the time."

"But if the ants are being drawn here, the highest concentration of energy is the collision point." A French female scientist explained.

"Collision point?" Dariela inquired. "That doesn't sound ominous at all.

"What the hell is she even doing here?" Mitch questioned Chloe and Jackson.

"No more hostility today." I warned him and he rolled his eyes but let it go.

"This place must have a way of dispersing all that energy, right?"

"Maybe we can use the accelerator's own system to dissipate the ants' energy."

"Oh, that may work." The scientist said. "But diverting that much power will require manual override."

"Where's the override?" Jackson asked.

"That way." The operative pointed through the double doors that we just came through. "It's a wall console in between the fourth and fifth stations."

"Get to the override." Chloe ordered us. "I'll evacuate them." Jackson, Mitch and I started to head out.

"I'll go with them." Dariela said, following after us.

"Great, maybe you can find something else to shoot." Mitch said sarcastically.

"Are you saying the ants are smart enough to know that they can cause this. . . what's it called?"

"Runaway fusion reaction, and no, they're not that self-aware, it's more like a biological imperative." We raced down the hallway and the blood raced through my veins, triggering adrenaline. When the adrenaline reached my heart, my wolf took over and I phased. There was no stopping it nor did I have any control over it.

"Holy hell!"

"Don't startle her or she will attack you."

"Me startle her?!" When the hallway came to an end and split off into two directions, I skidded to a halt and looked left to see an army of ants flooding the hallway and they moved in a black mass towards us. Mitch pulled Dariela back but before Jackson and I could move out of the way, the ants surrounded us. But they didn't attack. They simply went around us and kept heading down that hallway. I looked in shock at Mitch for an explanation. "Did you see that?"

"Yeah, I did. We'll worry about it later. Let's go." We rushed down the steps and out onto a platform that had a series of pipes of all sizes running through a tunnel.

"We're at the fourth station, it's got to be over there." Jackson said.

"We don't throw that override, the accelerator won't be able to absorb the ants' energy." We raced through a ride door and into another room with a large neon blue orb at one end. Jackson went to one end of the platform to the override door and groaned.

"No one said it would be locked."

"Yo, lab rat." Dariela called to Mitch. "Found something to shoot." She pointed to a fire extinguisher and Mitch went over to it and picked it up. "Hurry up! They're closing in!" I looked up at the pipes to see it being covered by blackness as the ants neared us.

"Can you do this?" Mitch asked her.

"Just throw it." Mitch threw towards the pipes and when it got close enough to the ants, Dariela fired at it and the extinguisher exploded and blew up the pipes, cutting off the ants' path. Electricity crackled from them and they started to form their own bridge across the gap. "Holy crap."

"Jackson? Charge it up." Jackson broke through the glass and pulled the lever. "Okay, there's going to be a shockwave." The electricity charged up and a wave of blue radiated throughout the room and shook us off our feet. The electricity winded down and I got to my paws and shook my fur.

"You guys okay?" Jackson asked.

"Did we win?" Dariela inquired.


	3. Chapter 3

"Mitch!" Chloe called to him from the other room before she walked into the lab and walked over to us with her laptop in her arms. "I got something."

"Hey, Chloe." Jackson greeted her as me and him leaned up against the table facing Mitch. "You got to see this." Jackson pointed to the two DNA strands on the computer screen. "Mitch found a link between Kovacs, Callana and the mutated animals." Chloe glanced at the screen for a second before she looked at Jackson then at Mitch.

"Does that link include you?"

"Busted." Mitch and I laughed at Jackson.

"Listen, I'm sorry." Jackson apologized.

"We agreed not to tell anyone." Chloe scolded him.

"I know what we agreed to, Chloe, but Mitch agreed. . ."

"All right." Mitch cut him off. "Ross, Rachel. I see where this is going. I'm not interested in taking that ride. Women don't like to be lied to."

"Moving on." Chloe muttered, pushing past us to set her laptop down.

"Everybody knows that. What do you got?" Chloe sighed before speaking.

"So the vultures and ants found a way to alter our environment. I may have found another. General Davies transferred this animal to Vancouver yesterday. According to his report, it says that this sloth was capable of creating an earthquake in Costa Rica."

"I'm. . . sorry." Jackson sounded confused as he spoke. "Come again?" Mitch leaned over Chloe and Jackson to get a better look at the report.

"Says here the sloth has. . . developed a call that can generate a low frequency infrasound?" Mitch recited. "Really?"

"And that can cause an earthquake?" Chloe asked, looking at Mitch who shrugged his shoulders and picked up his coffee.

"I don't know. I mean, a few years ago at a football game in Seattle, the Seahawks fans were jumping and cheering so much that it actually registered on a nearby seismograph."

"So you're saying that General Davies' report is correct?" Jackson inquired.

"We need that sloth. Clearly, its switch is turned on, and if I can understand his switch, might be able to figure out a way to keep yours from turning on at all."

"You think this little guy has got the Triple-Helix?" I questioned him.

"I'd put money on it. And understanding the Triple-Helix, that's the key to saving your life." Mitch turned to look at Chloe. "Which is why your boyfriend was right in telling me." Chloe rolled her eyes.

"Let's go get our sloth." She mumbled under breath, closing her laptop and leaving the lab.

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Abraham weaved the SUV through the cluster of police cars and ambulances and fire trucks as we made our way to the building in Vancouver where the sloth was supposed to be. We got out of the SUV and walked over to the crater in the middle of the lot where the building as was supposed to be. We stood at the edge and peered down at the rumble.

"You're sure this is the place?" Jackson asked.

"This is the address on the transfer order." Chloe informed him.

"Looks like someone got here first." Mitch said.

"Well, if the sloth was in there, it's dead." Abraham muttered.

"We don't know that." I said, shaking my head and stuffing my hands into my jacket pocket as the cold air whipped around me.

"Um, I'm missing something. Why is it so important?" Jackson and Chloe exchanged looks.

"Yeah, listen, Abe, there's something that you should know. . ." Jackson began to speak and tell Abraham the truth but Chloe cut him off.

"Mitch thinks the sloth can help make a cure." Chloe said hastily.

"Well, if it's the sloth we're after, all we need is to walk in the rainforest of Brazil." Abraham said. "At their speed, even you could catch one, rafiki."

"We need this sloth. We've confirmed it has an advanced mutation."

"An eyewitness saw military trucks." Dariela said, walking up to us.

"Davies was here."

"Looks that way. They loaded a large crate and sped off just before an earthquake hit."

"That sounds like the sloth." Jackson confirmed.

"You think this was caused by a sloth?" Abraham inquired.

"Yep, and he had help." Mitch's voice sounded a little way away and we turned to see half his body stick out from a manhole. "You guys got to see this." He disappeared back into the manhole and we reluctantly followed after him. I began to cough and hack at the smell as I reached the bottom. I covered my nose trying to block the scent of sewage and rotten things but it was no use. My eyes and nose burned and watered at the smell. I closed my eyes and grounded myself to reality and in the moment and pushed past the smell. I turned towards Mitch and saw him flashing his flashlight as a series of holes in the concrete wall. I slowly made my way over there, the mud and water squishing under my shoes. I knelt down in front of them and peered at the holes that led to tunnels.

"What is that?" Dariela asked.

"Moles." I answered, reaching my fingers into one of the tunnels and running them along the stirred up dirt that confirmed my answer.

"Moles?"

"Yeah." Mitch said. "We got moles."

"Moles and sloths. Sounds like my dating life after I got divorced."

"Those tunnels look a little large to be mole tunnels." Jackson said.

"Plural, Jackson." I reminded, turning to look at him. "Mole with an s at the end."

"Phenomenal creatures." Mitch said. "You know, they. . . they smell in stereo. They got these sensory receptors on their nose. They're called Eimer's organs. Amazing."

"You sure it's moles?" Chloe asked.

"Yeah." Mitch shined the flashlight on the concrete ground. "See how those scratch marks are spaced out? Moles are polydactyl. Means they-they've got an extra thumb. Well, it's actually an extended wrist bone, acts like a thumb for digging."

"Okay, mole fetish aside, you really think that moles attacked the building?" Jackson inquired.

"Yes, I do. It speaks to a whole new, higher level of mutation, because moles, they work alone. They only come together to procreate."

"Something we should all strive for."

"They brought down one building in a very large city." Abraham said. "Do you think they were targeting the Noah Objective?"

"My guess is they were following the low-frequency vibration of the sloth." Mitch suggested. An animal roared in the distance and I immediately stopped and put my arm out in front of Mitch as if that was some form of protecting him. I could feel my eyes glowing as my wolf sight took over wanting fully shift but I fought against it. My muscles strained and spasm as I fought against trying to shift.

"All in favor of a swift exit?" Dariela asked. Mitch put his hand on my arm and pushed it away and walked past me. My teeth grinded together as I tensed up ready to jump into action if I needed to. My eyes flickered from the darkness to the left of us and then back to Mitch keeping an eye on him as he peered at something in front of us.

"No." There was a large perfect circle cut out in the concrete wall in front of us. "We got to follow the moles to get the sloth.

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I army crawled in wolf form in front of Mitch with Dariela behind him and Jackson behind her. Abraham and Chloe were back at the plane with directions on where we need to go through the tunnels. Loose dirt from above us fell on us every so often and it ached that I didn't have room to shake it from my fur.

"I don't hear any animals." Jackson called up to us.

"Do moles make a noise?" Dariela asked.

"Yeah." Mitch said. "High-pitched squeak. Kind of like the ones I've been hearing from Abe's room lately."

"Are you sure, Mitch?" Jackson laughed. "I think the ones I've been hearing from your room sound more like moles." I stopped in my tracks and swished my tail. I looked over at my shoulder and let out a long menacing growl at Jackson. Mitch laughed at me and playfully tapped me on the hindquarters.

"He's messing with you, Calla. Keep moving." I snorted and shook my head before moving forward.

"Mitch, you sure these things can't cave in on us?"

"No. Moles are very precise little architects. All they do is work."

"You know, the more you talk about moles, the more I understand you." Dariela told Mitch and I laughed in my head.

"What are you trying to say?"

"She's trying to say that you love moles because you are one." Jackson informed him. "And I have to agree."

"Hey, Chloe, we're flying blind here."

"Okay, I'm accessing your transponders." Chloe said through the earpiece. "Should have eyes on you." A muffled growl sounded somewhere throughout the tunnels.

"That's not good." Dariela said.

"Hey, what do you see up there?" Jackson yelled to me. I stopped and peered through an opening of the tunnel and used my wolf vision to peer through the darkness to see a large pile of dead moles. I moved over as far as I could and whined at Mitch, tossing my head towards the opening, signaling him to come look. He scooted forward in the little space and shined his flashlight on the moles.

"Uh. . . we have a little problem." Mitch said. "Actually about a thousand little problems."

"What is it?" Dariela asked.

"Wall of dead moles. Hey, Chloe? We've hit a dead end. Literally."

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"Calla, grab one of those moles will you?" Mitch asked me. I let out a whiny howl and shook my head. "Don't argue with me, just do it." I whined and buried my head in my paws, protesting. "Fine." Mitch reached past me as far as he could and picked up a mole and turned around and tried to hand it off to Dariela.

"I'm not touching that." She said.

"I need a sample."

"Oh, man." She gingerly took it from him.

"All right, Chloe, there's no trail left. We're coming out."

"Okay, uh, Mitch?" Chloe said. "I need you—" Her voice trailed off and I whined in frustration wanting to know what we had to do. "I need you to keep going."

"Chloe, there's nothing left to follow."

"I need you to keep moving."

"Keep moving where, Chloe?" Jackson asked her. "Where are we headed? Come on, what do you want us to do next?"

"Hold on, I'm about to find the sloth." I walked past the dead moles and up into another tunnel that was a very tight fit. A pile of dirt from the roof and I sneezed and shook my head. As I was clearing the dirt from my nose, a growling sounded very close in front of me and I slowly looked up to stare directly in the glowing yellow eyes of an alligator. I quickly scrambled back as it snapped at me and walked towards me. I collided into Mitch who was trying to crawl backwards as fast as he could.

"Go back!" Mitch yelled at Dariela and Jackson. "Go back! Go back! Go back! Go back! Chloe, find us a way out of here!" I leapt forward and snapped at the alligator, trying to startle it and buy us some time to get us space between us and the alligator. But it only seemed to piss it off more.

"I need another minute."

"We don't have a minute! There's an alligator down here!"

"Okay, okay! Finding a way out now! There's an exit! It's a few yards behind you but you'll have to dig your way out."

"Go! Go! Go! Go! Go! Go! Jackson, move!"

"I'm trying!" Jackson shouted back at Mitch. The alligator snarled at me and then lunged at me and I lunged back at it, swatting it on the nose with my paw and making it shake its head in anger. "Chloe? I don't see it. Where is it?"

"There's an access tunnel right in front of you." Chloe said.

"I think I got a shot!" Dariela said.

"Don't!" Mitch ordered her. "You'll hit Calla! Are you crazy?! Jackson, dig faster!"

"I'm going as fast as I can!" Jackson said as the alligator continued to snarl at me. "I got it!"

"Go, go, go!" I continued to back up, snapping and barking at the alligator every time that it got too close. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Mitch disappear into the service tunnel and I followed after him. As soon as I turned my back on, the alligator took the chance to attack. I barely had enough time to react. I barreled into Mitch as I shifted and turned on my back and threw out my right leg to kick the alligator away which was a big mistake. As my foot connected the alligator's snout, it opened up and closed down on my leg at the same time the tunnel caved in around us. Darkness closed in and my breath stopped but breathing was the least of my worries. I couldn't stop thinking of the burning agony in my leg. Something grabbed onto my right arm and began dragging me out. The dirt gave way and light blinded me as my lungs filled with air. Mitch had a hold of me as Jackson and Dariela were pulling him out of the tunnel. We collapsed on the ground and I groaned in pain as my leg hit the concrete floor. "Damn it, Calla!" Mitch took of his jacket and wrapped it around me before rolling me onto my back and looking at me leg. "No broken bones, but the cuts are deep. You're an idiot, Calla. Trying to kick an alligator? What is wrong with you?"

"You're welcome." I groaned.

"What happened to that alligator?" Dariela asked.

"I don't know." Mitch breathed. "You want to go back in and look for him?"

"Chloe, get us out of here." Jackson ordered. "Calla's hurt pretty badly."

"Jackson, there's an exit ten meters behind you." Mitch scooped me up in his arms and carried me out.

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"So, we are officially looking at foul play." Mitch said as he examined the dead mole back at the plane's lab. I was sitting on the medically table with my right leg wrapped up from the cuts.

"What do you mean?" I asked.

"Mass mole execution."

"How?" Jackson inquired walking down the steps to the lab.

"Somebody turned those tunnels into a gas chamber."

"Well, it had to have been Davies." I said, sliding off the table and slowly putting my right foot to the ground. I gently put pressure on it and a sharp pain shot up my leg and I hissed through my teeth, quickly lifting my leg back up. I tried it again and worked through the pain until my foot was flat on the floor. I slowly made my way over to Mitch to look at his work. "Davies must have known that the moles were following the sloth and took them out before they could create another sinkhole."

"I did some analysis on the gas. Not like anything I've ever seen before. And with airborne distribution? Perfect way to cull the animals. And, since we're still standing, it doesn't seem to have any effect on humans."

"Or half-humans, apparently." Jackson muttered, looking at me.

"Maybe. I mean, the gas is fast-acting, but. . . might have just been really lucky timing."

"I thought about it, and, uh, I gotta tell Abe about my condition. All right? He has the right to know."

"What, are you crazy? Even for a half-man, that is a full bad idea. Nothing against your bosom buddy, but his bosom buddy? Not too fond of mutants."

"Abe is like a brother to me."

"Dariela was friends with Kovacs, right? She still shot him in the head."

"That's true. That's a fair point."

"Anyway, that's a five week from now problem."

"Davies has a gas that he can use to kill with prejudice."

"Clearly, he's not afraid to use it." "

And we are trying to restore things to factory settings, and this sicko just wants to buy a new phone."

"About twenty quintillion new phones."

"And the best chance we have to stop him is inside the walls of Reiden Global."

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I sat at the foot of Mitch's bed, staring out in space as he began to undress himself, getting ready to take a shower.

"Calla, what's wrong?" He called to me as he began to unbuckle his pants. I shook my head to clear it and smiled at him.

"Nothing." I grinned.

"Are you feeling okay? How's your leg?"

"I'm fine, Mitch. I'm fine."

"Are you sure?"

"Yes, Mitch." I wasn't about to tell him that I was beginning to lose control of my wolf. She was slipping through my grasp and I couldn't hold onto her. I was losing control over her. And I wasn't going to tell him that because it would just be another reason why Dariela should put a bullet in my head like she did Kovacs.

"Come take a shower with me. You'll feel better." He disappeared into the bathroom and I stared after him. The sound of water turned on and I winced at the loudness of the water droplets hitting the tile shower floors. I sighed and stood up and slid my shirt off over my head. I couldn't think about my wolf right now. All I could think about was Mitch and the time left I had with him.

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I walked down the steps of Reiden Global to the lobby where the IADG leaders were scattered across the floor moving around like ants. My red dress flowed around my legs all the way down to my ankles where my silver heels barely poked out. The dressed hugged my hips and formed nicely around the upper half of my body. The one strap that held my dress over my shoulder was covering in little red roses and in the right light you could see a gold shimmer to the dress. My hair was up in a spiral bun with one little ringlet draping down the right side of my face. We were at Reiden Global to try to get a man's heartbeat to get in the back and grab the sloth. Dariela was already in the crowd mingling while Abraham and Mitch were to my left on the sidelines drinking champagne. Mitch had his glass to his lips when he turned and noticed me walking down the steps. He stopped in mid-drink and stared at me as I came down the last step. My cheeks grew hot as I blushed and hung my head as I felt his eyes wander across my body. I made my way over to him and hooked my arm in the crook of his left elbow.

"You look absolutely stunning, Calla." Mitch breathed.

"Are you sure this is going to work?" Abraham asked Mitch as Jackson just informed us over the earpiece that he just drugged one of the workers.

"Just slipping him a mickey."

"What do you know about slipping a mickey?"

"Oh, I can slip a mickey, okay? I'm a doctor, for God's sake."

"So they teach you mickey-slipping in doctor school?"

"Just. . . I. . . I know that trusting my judgment isn't one of your strong suits, but maybe just this once give it a shot, huh?" Abraham sighed but didn't say anything else as Mitch pulled out his phone and looked at it. "Dr. Heart-Print will be coming our way any second now."

"Ladies and gentlemen," Davies' voice echoed throughout the room as he stood up on the stage in his military uniform. "I'm happy to welcome you here on this special night. Now, I know many of you are still clinging to the hope that the animal problem will somehow rectify itself. I, unfortunately, am here to share with you that things have gotten a lot worse. Ladies and gentlemen, we must stop these animals. We finally have the means to do so. Allow me to introduce TX-14. A two-part gas. A fast-acting elimination agent and a neutralizer. Which, when they combine, forms a compound that only targets the mutation. Human beings will be safe, but every animal with the mutation will be. . . destroyed. Tomorrow before the vote, we will give you a demonstration of the efficiency and the safety of this gas. But tonight enjoy yourselves. Get to know one another. For you will be sharing a page in the history books as the assembly that save the world. Thank you." Everyone broke out into an applause as he finished his speech and walked off the stage. A man groaned somewhere in the crowd and the crowd gasped as a man dropped to the floor, clutching his stomach.

"Uh, was that supposed to be the mickey guy?" I whispered to Mitch peering through the crowd and we joined up with the others at the edge of the room and started walking down a hallway away from the party.

"You were supposed to give him a case of the runs, not a heart attack." Jackson told Mitch.

"A mild heart attack, he'll be fine." Mitch reassured him.

"Slipping him a mickey." Abraham scoffed. "You said you'd done this before."

"I have. I mean, it was on a llama, but. . ."

"A llama?" Jackson and I exclaimed.

"I do not want to hear the rest of that story." Dariela said.

"We need a new plan." Chloe said. "We cannot leave without that sloth."

"Give me the mic and meet me downstairs." Mitch pulled out the mic from his pocket and handed it to Dariela.

"What are you going to do?" Abraham asked her.

"Get you the heart-print." She broke away from us and we continued our way down the hallway to the steps that led to the doors to the lab. Abraham was few yards behind us pacing around.

"What are you doing?" Chloe inquired.

"Noting all the exits." Abraham answered. "Thanks to Mickey here, we're preparing to make a quick departure."

"What I said was, it should work." Mitch corrected him.

"That's not how I remember it." I took off my heels and tossed them aside. If there was going to be a quick departure, then I needed to be sure that I could run without twisting an ankle.

"Oh, look, the gang's all here." Davies called down the hallway as Dariela pressed a gun into his back and led him towards us. "Do you have any idea how many soldiers I have in this building?"

"My guess is about thirty." Dariela informed him. "And every one of them is focused on the room with two hundred VIPs." Dariela pushed him to the lab door and the scanner read his heartbeat and the doors slid open.

"Where's the sloth?" Jackson asked Davies.

"You took a four-star general hostage for a sloth?" Davies scoffed. "Well, this is a first, and it's gonna land you in deep. . ." He didn't finish the sentence because Jackson's fist connected with his nose with a loud pop.

"Where's the sloth?"

"Down there to the left, tough guy."

"Mitch, come with me. Abe, stay on Davies." Mitch and Jackson took off and Chloe nodded to me and Dariela to follow her down the hallway.

"Where are we going?" Dariela asked.

"He gave up the sloth too quickly." Chloe explained. "He was fine with them going left."

"So there must be something this way he didn't want us to find." I finished her thought. We turned down the hallway and came across another set of doors.

"Air lock doors." Dariela informed us. "Looks like your theory was right. The gas must be down here." Chloe's phone chimed and she stopped in her tracks as she looked at her phone and Dariela kept walking.

"What is it, Chloe?" She showed me her phone and on the screen was a picture of the house that Jamie and I stayed in in New Brunswick and on the roof was the word Caraquet spelt out in stones. My mouth dropped in joy. "Chloe, you found her. You found Jamie."

"Keep up!" We turned to caught up with Dariela. We walked into a room with two canisters on the edge of the room. One had a yellow stripe on it and the other had the blue stripe on it. "The valves are closed. That's good. And this one's the neutralizer."

"So the yellow one is the poison."

"There will be nothing to vote on if they can't do the demonstration." Chloe said and she broke the valve and air hissed as she took the canister. The room went dark and the red lights began to flash as the alarm blared.

"That's not good." Dariela said.

"Go, go, go." Chloe said as she lugged the canister behind her. I grabbed one end and helped her lift it up and we began to make our way back to the exit.

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We were about to rounded the corner but immediately stopped when we ran into three armed guards.

"Target!" One of the soldiers yelled and they raised their guns at us.

"Take cover!" Dariela shouted as gunfire sounded and Chloe and I dropped the canister to take cover. Dariela pulled out her gun from under her dress. "I got this." She quickly looked around the corner and shot the three guards down. "It's clear! Let's go." I looked at the canister to see gas leaking out of it.

"It's been hit." I said. "Run. This could kill everybody." Chloe kicked the canister away as Dariela and I took off. The canister exploded behind us and a wall of gas started following us. Pain returned to my right leg and I slowed down but kept running. Gas formed around me and I couldn't see in front of me.

"Callana! Chloe!" The gas filled my nostrils and my lungs constricted and chest began to cave. I gasped for air as I tried to keep running but my vision was becoming blurry. Just as I was about to drop to the ground and give up, a force shoved me into me from behind and I stumbled forward through the closing air lock doors and fell to the ground. "Chloe!" I was no longer in the gas but I still couldn't breathe. Tears formed in my eyes as I thought I was going to die. My body began to seize up and constrict as I started to have a seizure.

"Calla!" Then, there was that voice.


	4. Chapter 4

"Come on, Calla." Mitch whispered to me as he laid me on the top with me hyperventilating. "Come on, stay with me." He put an oxygen mask over my face and I immediately started sucking in air like it would be my last breath. "Easy, easy. Deep, slow breaths. Watch me." I looked through my blurry vision and found his brown eyes. He inhaled slowly and then exhaled and I matched his breathing rhythm. "Good. Keep doing that." He disappeared from my line of sight but I focused on keeping my breathing in check. My muscles still shook but my aching lungs began to feel better. My head felt like someone was taking a hammer to it and my eyes grew droopy. "Hey! Stay awake, Calla!" My eyes flew open and I looked around for my angel but couldn't find him.

"Trotter's preparing for takeoff." I heard Dariela's voice. "He says that someone's been trying to contact us on the plane's secure channel."

"Don't answer." Abraham's voice sounded distant. "Secure or not, we can't risk letting Davies know where we are." The voices blended together as I fought against unconscious.

"What is that?" Jackson asked.

"Adrenaline." Mitch answered.

"Why aren't you giving it to Calla?"

"Because I give her adrenaline she'll shift and I can't risk her shifting and having the poison react worse than what it is now to her. She'll have to fight this on her own. Chloe needs all the help that she can get right now."

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I woke up with a start with the oxygen mask still over my face. My vision seemed clearer as I looked around and saw Mitch sitting next to me.

"Welcome back to the land of the living," Mitch whispered to me as he brushed my hair back over my ear. He took the oxygen mask off me and I gasped for air. "Easy, easy. Don't struggle for it." I calmed down and inhaled deeply, my lungs aching. I winched at the pain. "Your lungs are going to feel like that for a while." I opened my mouth to speak but no words came out. No air for words came out. "Take your time." I let out a shaky breath and inhaled again.

"Chloe. . ." I rasped.

"She didn't make it." I slowly pushed myself up and swung my legs over the edge of the table to face him. He stood up and gripped my shoulders to steady me as I threaten to fall back over.

"What?"

"She inhaled too much of the poison. There's was nothing I could do. We sent her body back to France."

"She. . . she saved. . ." I inhaled again. "She saved my. . . life. My leg was. . . hurting and the. . . gas got me. I wasn't. . . going. . . to make it. But she. . . pushed me. . . through the doors. . . before they closed. Where's. . . Jackson?" Mitch sighed and leaned against the desk behind him.

"He's around. He's not taking her death so well. Abraham is with Dariela making sure Jackson doesn't kill her." I looked at him questioningly. "Dariela's the one who closed the doors." My eyes glowed as anger flowed through me. "Don't do it, Calla. You cannot shift. I don't know how the poison is going to react if you shift and you still have some in your system. So no shifting for a couple of days, okay? So calm down." I inhaled sharply and relaxed. "Thank you." A thought crossed my mind.

"Jamie. . ." I panted for breath.

"Jamie? What about Jamie?"

"She's in. . . she's in Cara. . . Caraquet."

"Caraquet?"

"Yes. Chloe. . . found her."

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I laid in Mitch's arms in bed as I thought about all that had happened in the past twenty-four hours. The plane swayed violently to the right and I immediately sat up with Mitch right beside me. I jumped out of bed and grabbed my robe with Mitch right behind me. I opened the sliding doors to the bedroom and walked out into the hallway as Trotter was talking through the speakers.

"It's not me." He said. "Someone else is flying the plane."

"What—what does that mean, somebody else is flying the plane?" Mitch asked from behind me as we ran into Jackson and Abraham at the bar.

"It must be Davies." Abraham said.

"Well, how?"

"He must have hacked our plane." Dariela said, coming into the room. A whirring noise came from underneath us.

"That's the landing gear coming down." Abraham said.

"Everyone strap in." Trotter said. "We're landing whether we like it or not."

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I stood in front of Mitch facing the door as I watched the door handle open into the plane. Dariela was down the hallway with a gun in her hand ready to fire at whoever enters. The door open and a women with long wavy brown hair stepped in with her hands in the air.

"Hold your fire." She ordered. "Please don't shoot." She looked down the hallway towards Mitch and me. "That goes double for you."

"Who the hell are you?" Jackson asked.

"This could've all been much simpler if you'd just picked up on the secure channel. We installed an emergency override just in case I ever needed to take remote control of my plane."

"Your plane?"

"Yes. Mine." She looked over at Mitch again. "Hello, Mitch."

"Allison." Mitch responded. A growl rumbled in my chest.

"You two know each other?" I inquired through clenched teeth.

"She's my stepmom."

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"Let's just start over, shall we?" Allison suggested as we made our way into the lab. "My name is Allison Shaw. I'm the Deputy Secretary of Defense and, yes, I was married to Mitch's father."

"Somebody else want to talk now?" Mitch asked.

"I do." Jackson said. "We've been flying around on your stepmother's plane and you didn't think to tell us?"

"Keeping secrets like this. . ." Abraham began to shout but Allison cut him off.

"Mitch had no idea." Allison said. "I made sure of it. We haven't spoken in. . ."

"Twelve years." Mitch informed her.

"Twelve years."

"So why now, Allison? What do you want with us? Why'd you bring us here?"

"With Amelia gone and Eleanor gone, there's fewer of us left. We need to work together. We have to. My family owns the largest orchard on the West Coast and our tree are all dying. I need your help to stop it."

"You just said that you work for the Pentagon, so why would you need our help?" I inquired.

"Because the government can't know anything about this. If Davies finds out that our food source is threatened, he'll use it to leverage additional resources to the Noah Objective. You're the only ones that I can trust."

"So. . . Chloe's dead." Mitch said. "Jamie's in some Canadian. . ."

"Wait, Chloe's—Chloe's dead? What happened?"

"We disrupted General Davies event in Vancouver and. . ." Abraham couldn't even finish explaining the story.

"I'm sorry."

"Can you just back that up for a second?" Jackson questioned her. "You knew Chloe?"

"She and Eleanor were the only ones who knew that I was behind your team. I've been secretly working against Davies, trying to find an alternative to the Noah Objective."

"Well, then let us go find that alternative, OK? Because that's what Chloe wanted."

"Please. I need you to come with me to my orchard."

"You know, we're not gonna go anywhere with you." Mitch exclaimed. "You can keep your stupid plane. We'll find another way to get Jamie and find a cure."

"What he said." Dariela agreed.

"Come on, Calla." Mitch called to me as he began to leave the lab but I stood where I was. Mitch stopped walking and turned back to me. "Calla?" I stood in front of Allison reading her facial expression. Being around Chloe for almost a year, I picked up a few things from her.

"You have something else to say?" I asked her.

"Did Chloe ever mention The Courier?" Allison inquired and that got Jackson's attention immediately.

"Yeah." Jackson answered. "Yeah, she did, right. . . what the hell do you know?"

"You save my family's orchard, and this plane is yours, no strings. And I'll tell you everything." I looked to the right at Mitch for an answer. If anyone could figure out what was happening to her orchard, it was Mitch.

"Fine!" Mitch exhaled loudly and stormed off.

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"This time of the season, these branches should be heavy with fruit, but everything's stunted." Allison explained as we walked down a row of her orchard trees. I pulled the jacket around me tighter as the cold air whipped around me. The trees around us barely had any pink leaves on them. "It's stopped growing. It's the same story all over the area. And it's spreading." We approached and elder man who was crouched down by one of the trees, looking through the soil around the tree.

"Look at this stuff." He muttered and he handed something to Mitch as he kneeled down beside the man. I stuffed my hands into my pocket and leaned over Mitch's should to look at a small chip of hard substance between his fingers.

"Is that glass?" I muttered, squinting my eyes at it. "Crystal maybe?"

"What are you?" Mitch mumbled.

"It looks like glass to me, so that's what we've been calling it." The man said. "It poisons the trees. Soaks in through the roots."

"It's in the soil throughout the entire property." Allison explained.

"I've been working here half my life and I've never seen anything like it. At this rate, we won't produce a tenth of our normal yield."

"Damn." Dariela breathed as Mitch pulled out a plastic container from his bag and began to take sample of the soil around the dying tree.

"With no one eating meat anymore, fruit is more important than ever." Allison explained.

"If this continues to spread, hundreds of thousands of people will starves." Abraham said.

"And you think that an animal is behind this glass?" Jackson inquired.

"Well, it's not plant-based." Allison said. "And given your work connecting mutated animals to environmental events. . ."

"If there is a connection, we'll find it." Mitch assured her. "Then we can get the hell out of here."

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"Well, it's not glass." Mitch confirmed as he did a series of tests on the soil sample.

"Thought that part was obvious." Jackson said, coming down the steps to the lab.

"Right. But bet you wouldn't have guessed it's organic. Cellular structure's a lot like skin with, uh, traces of toxic residue that are definitely animal-based."

"Well, what animal do you think it's from?"

"I don't know yet. But if we're gonna make it to Caraquet, I better figure that out quick. Right?" Jackson walked over to the lab door and closed and then looked around to make sure no one else was there. "Oh. You not here to talk about toxic glass, are you? All right, look. If you want to talk about Allison. . ."

"Last night, when I was saying good-bye to Chloe, um. . . I started crying. . ."

"Yeah. Well. . ."

"Black tears. They were thick, almost like oil."

"Anybody see this?"

"No."

"You're displaying the same symptomology as Kovacs. Right before he escaped, I saw the same thing. It was black tears."

"So what does that mean, that I'm progressing? I'm one step closer to him?" Before Mitch could give him an answer, the lab door opened and Allison walked in. Mitch sighed and rolled his eyes.

"OK, I get it. It's your plane. You've got to learn to knock."

"Not now, Mitch." She snapped. "Please, it's Bill. You have to help him."

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I raced up the steps to the second story of the farmhouse behind Mitch with Jackson behind me. An elderly woman was crying hysterically in a bedroom and we rushed in to see and old man choking and gasping for air.

"What's wrong with him?" The woman asked Mitch. "Help him!" Mitch set his bag down and stood beside Bill.

"Bill, hey." Mitch got Bill's attention. "Look at me. Can you speak? Can you speak?" Bill shook his head. "No." Bill turned away from Mitch and blood sprayed from his mouth like an out of control sprinkler.

"Whoa!" Jackson exclaimed.

"Holy hell!" I cried out, running my hands through my hair. Bill turned back to Mitch with his hands out that were covered with blood and the glass substance from the orchard. He gagged and groaned, begging for Mitch to help him.

"Is that the suff from the orchard?" Bill's groans got louder and he tilted his head back and opened his mouth as a snake's head appeared in the opening.

"What the hell is that?!"

"We gotta pull it out." Mitch said.

"Hold him." Mitch and Jackson grabbed each of Bill's arms to hold him still and I grasped the snake behind the head and began pulling it out. Once it was all the way out, Allison opened a pillowcase and I tossed it inside. I turned back to Mitch as he lowered Bill to the ground and checked his pulse. Mitch glanced at me and shook his head. "Damn it."

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"At least now we know it's poisoning the trees." Mitch said as we stood outside the farmhouse in front of the car. "That stuff he threw up, the glass, same stuff we saw in the orchard. Snake shed it like molted skin."

"Given the amount of glass we saw in the orchard, there must be thousands of snakes." Jackson confirmed

"So where are all the snakes hiding?" Allison inquired. Jackson looked towards in small creek that ran along the edge of the orchard.

"Snake came in through the toilet, right?"

"It certainly looks like it."

"I think I got an idea."

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"This is the aquifer that runs underneath your property." Jackson said as he pulled up the orchard on the map on the tablet. "It supplies water to all the farms in the county. My thought is that the snakes are shedding their toxic glass directly into your farm's water supply."

"What about the drinking water?" I questioned him.

"The county draws it from the river, so at least we don't have to worry about contamination." Allison explained.

"But we do." Jackson objected as he zoomed out on the map. "Your aquifer feeds into tons of other public water sources for hundreds of miles. Your farm is only the beginning."

"So these snakes, they're going to poison the entire Pacific Northwest."

"Countless innocent people are gonna be drinking poison directly from their kitchen sinks unless we do something." I breathed.

"So how do we stop it?"

"Poison them. . ." Mitch murmured as he stared off into space, deep in thought. I watched his eyes as if I could see the gears inside his head twisting and turning as he came up with a plan. "before they poison us."

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I leaned against the bathroom sink and opened my eyes wide as I looked in the mirror. My eyes were still a slate grey color but I focused more on my left pupil. I sighed in relief when I saw that it was still a perfect round black hole. I rocked back onto my feet and turned to walk back out to the bedroom. The comlink beeped and Mitch's voice sounded through the speaker.

"Uh, w-we got a problem in here." He said hastily. At the sound of his worried voice, I was on the balls on my feet racing to the steps that would lead me down into the lab area. The other were right behind me.

"Are you okay?" Dariela asked. I rounded the corner of the staircase to the back of the lab where Mitch was but I skidded to a stop when I saw the snake that we got from the orchard on the floor and out of its cage. It started hissing and rattling as soon as it saw more people around it.

"Uh, for the moment."

"Where's the poison?" Jackson asked.

"Einstein over here drank it." Allison snapped, glaring at Mitch.

"Mitch!" I exclaimed.

"I was making a point." Mitch explained.

"I'll get the tranqs." Dariela said.

"I got this." Jackson said as he looked to the snake and started walking slowly towards it.

"Jackson. . ." I murmured. I had an idea on what he was thinking and I wasn't sure if it would work. He was hoping that the mutation inside of him would be enough to become buddy buddies with the snake.

"Easy, easy." Jackson crouched down in front of it and the snake lunged up him but didn't make a move to try to harm Jackson as he got closer and closer to the snake.

"You sure you want to do this?" Mitch inquired.

"You're asking that now when he's five inches away from the snake?" I snapped. The snake struck at Jackson again, fangs ready to bite but when it saw the dog bite on Jackson's arm, it stopped in mid-strike and backed down.

"Rafiki." Abraham gasped. The snake coiled up and sat there as if it was as docile as a mouse. "My God." Mitch picked up the cage that fell over as Jackson grabbed the snake and tossed it back into the plastic container. "Rafiki, how did you. . ."

"We should talk."

"Give me the formula for the poison." I said to Mitch. "I'll start synthesizing it."

"You know how to do it?" Mitch questioned me and I laughed, giving him my sunbeaming radiant smile.

"I keep you around for more than just sex, you know." He laughed and handed me the formula.

"I'll have my guy start synthesizing it too." Allison told Mitch.

"And then we can leave for Caraquet?" Mitch lost his smile as he spoke to his former stepmother.

"Yes, we can."

"We?"

"You can explain on the way." Allison told Jackson and she took the formula from Mitch and left the plane.

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"Why did you not tell us this before?" Abraham said after Jackson explained his situation. Both of our situations.

"I wanted to." Jackson assured his best friend.

"Chloe and I shut it down." Mitch added.

"But why?" Abraham pushed.

"What if they go berserk and start attacking people, like Kovacs did?" Dariela asked Mitch.

"She's right." Allison agreed. "Is it even safe for them to be here?"

"Well, like it or not, we have to be, because without us, you have no cure." I snarled. I felt my fangs begin to elongate, my wolf wanting to push out. I felt like I was on trial and if the verdict reached guilty, I was going to be executed. But my wolf wasn't going to go down without a fight.

"All right." Mitch said as he placed a hand on the small of my back and my nerves instantly began to calm down. "There's something you all should see." Mitch walked over to the computer screen and turned it on to pull up a diagram of a DNA molecule. "This is the DNA molecule we all come to know and love in high school biology. Double helix. Two strands of genetic information, elegantly entwined together. This. . ." He pulled up another diagram. A yellow third strand appeared wrapped around the molecule. "Is what Jackson's DNA looks like. The mutation has caused it to develop a third strand."

"A triple helix?" Abraham muttered.

"Ah, I'm not done. There's more." Mitch pulled up a third DNA molecule and this one looked similar to Jackson's except the yellow strand on this one has red spots. "Those are canine DNA entwined with human DNA. This is Calla's DNA. These two structures are just unique to Calla and Jackson. They share it with the vultures, the ants, the sloth, the snakes."

"Thank you for making me feel like a science experiment, Mitch." I sighed. "Why don't you just move on and tell them about the cure?"

"Ok. Well, these two are the key. Calla's DNA looks to be the final stage. If anything, the next to final stage. I just need to figure what changes between Jackson's DNA to become like Calla's DNA. Because this triple helix structure isn't the only thing their DNA shares with these animals. They also share genomic fossils-extinct genes-Genetic instructions that were silenced millions of years ago, thought to be non-functional until now. If you think of the rungs on a ladder, each rung contains genomic fossils from a different animal. If I can identify each one and its animal source, I should be able to come up with a cure and reverse the mutation."

"You already know four, right?" Abraham inquired.

"And they all check out."

"So that leaves us three more animals to identify and capture." Allison said.

"Once we've identified all seven genomic fossils, I should be able to eliminate that third strand."

"Sounds like you got your work cut out for you." Dariela said.

"We could use your help." Jackson informed her. We all looked at him in shock considering that she was the one who closed the door on Chloe. "Be good to have you with us on the team. What do you say?" Dariela stared at him for a moment as she contemplate his offer.

"Copy that."

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On the other side of the hatch door, I could make out growling and roaring of different animals with my sensitive hearing. The noises brought back haunted memories of me on my own in those woods for all those months.

"You ready?" Dariela asked me as she stepped up beside me, fully dressed in her ranger uniform. I turned and looked at her, my slate grey eyes locking onto her brown eyes. Flashes of me killing animals between my own jaws scarred my vision. Flashes of bears trying to drag me down bruised my sight. I plastered a fake smile on my face and nodded. The hatch opened and I was out of the plane with Dariela in front of me. Fog clouded the ground. As we got closer to the source of the growls, I saw white bears in front of school buses. Not just white bears. They were polar bears. Dariela raised her tranquilizer and shot them and they dropped one by one to the ground within seconds of being shot. A figure stepped out from the bus. The figure was with a thick winter matte green jacket with a furred hood and a bandana around their face. Red flowing hair fell out of the hood and I couldn't mistake those green eyes for anything.

"Jamie!" I yelled.

"Oh, my God." I heard her breathe. I rushed toward her and embraced her in my arms. She smelled like death and muck but I didn't care. I was so happy to have my friend back.

"I am so sorry. I didn't mean to leave you behind. I thought you were right behind me in those woods."

"It's okay." She sighed in relief. "It's okay."


End file.
